Travels with Bowser Posts

After an hour of wandering through the old town, we stop at a beer garden for Frühschoppen. It’s a Sunday morning in southern Germany after all; what else could we possibly do? We take a seat at one of the long wooden tables under the trees and order Bamberg’s most famous beer: Schlenkerla Rauchbier (smoked beer). It tastes like bacon.

Bowser likes cheese. A lot. It’s one of the first Dutch words he was able to pronounce. When he’s in the mood for it, he points at the fridge and shouts: “Kaas! Ja, kaas!” He gets almost as excited about it as he gets about vehicles such as cars, tractors, trucks, ambulances, trains and excavators. For the ones who don’t know Bowser all that well: this means very excited. Anna and I like cheese too, especially the mountain cheese we eat when we’re in Vorarlberg. And so we decided to visit Bregenzerwald in search of the so-called Cheese Road.

Before I start, I want to make clear that I like Bowser a lot. And I like doing stuff with him. But every now and then it’s also very nice to do something without him. And so last Monday I left him with Anna at his grandparents’ place while I cycled the whole day through a part of Vorarlberg. By myself, so I could just cycle in my own desired pace and stop wherever and whenever I wanted to. I could decide which route exactly to follow, without taking other people’s preferences and suggestions into account. That’s why I like doing stuff on my own. Also, I don’t like people that much.

Bowser spends about half of his awake-time here in Vorarlberg playing with water. He either goes swimming in a lake, a cold mountain stream or – with bad weather – an indoor swimming pool. Most days, however, he simply enjoys himself with a big bucket filled with water in the garden of his grandparents. We wanted to find out if he also likes to just look at water. More precisely: look at waterfalls. And so we went to the Rappenlochschlucht. Actually, it was just on our to-do-list, but I have to build a story around it somehow…